Can hard drives re-invent the PVR?

The problem, according to Rob Pait, is that salespeople can't explain it. For me, the problem is that it's stuck in a subscription model. The "it," here, being the PVR, the "personal" video recorder, which comes with a hard-disk drive built in.

Pait is the global marketing manager for Seagate Technology's Consumer Electronics Testing and Engineering Center, in Longmont, CO, where consumer electronics manufacturers go for help in putting (what else?) Seagate HDDs into products that never had them before.

He gets no argument from me that far more than mere data can be stored in hard-disk drives: they've been used in video and audio edit-bays for years. On the set-top, Pait says a 40GB HDD can store up to 40 hours of NTSC (U.S.) television signals, and even more hours of multichannel audio. With an HDD aboard, users also get random access to any indexable moment in those hours. And we agree that developing new mass markets for commodity hardware (which HDDs have become) is a good thing; also that users are con fused. Where we differ is on the how and why they are confused.

Here's Pait on this subject: "There's a misperception that a PVR is a videotape replacement, that it's just a VCR with a hard drive," he told me. "But our OEM customers have to train the guys in the Circuit Cities and Best Buys [i.e., the retail channels] to say that a PVR actually gives people the ability to create a "personal TV channel." That's the bullet-point, and it's really a huge benefit. Once people grasp that, they can't live without it.

"It's an audio opportunity, too," he added. "There's enough onboard intelligence for robust apps with a robust interface, so it's not merely a big repository for dumping in your CD collection. It enables the device to surf the Web for you, looking for singles, and new releases. You can always put something into an MP3 player, but with an HDD you have room for the intelligence to control recording and playback--without the user having to be a technology wizard.

"What we're hearing from our OEM customers is that HDDs give them the performance and throughput essential lot recording and playing hack those streams of video and audio simultaneously. And two streams apparently aren't even enough: the more streams it can handle simultaneously, the better."

I can't dispute his customers' perceptions, but I take great issue with where the technology has led them, so far. The TiVO-type recorder is not an external HDD with a video cable. If you want to record those 40 hours, you have to buy not only the hardware but access to it, in the form of a monthly tee to a service provider. Presumably, this scheme was established to cushion advertisers against the inevitable loss of viewers (or, as we viewers are called, in the TV industry--eye bails). You wanna zip past the commercials? You gotta pay for the privilege.

That's the revenue stream that has so far emerged in the market--and the proof that home users don't like it is that units are not flying off shelves. Why? Because recording TV programs in this new way isn't "free", in the sense that videocassette recording is free, once you buy the machine and the consumables. Surely I'm not alone in feeling that, what with bills for CATV or satellite connections, for upmarket channels like HBO, for pay-movies, etc., people simply do not yearn to pay yet another monthly service charge.

And Pait agrees, to a point. "It's true," he said: "the subscription model hasn't worked well. The CATV market has been very slow to take advantage of HDDs. They haven't seen them as a way to add value to the cable box. So, in 2002 we're working with the cable industry to show them the value proposition: that it enables other services, including Web access, enhanced television, shop-via-TV. Local storage officials a lot of network traffic during downtimes."

Still, I wonder: until people (not just OEMs) decide that they want their TVs to do what their computers already do, i.e., to access services for which they already pay an ISR where is the "value proposition" to the user? So far, the PVR has offered few benefits. Skipping past commercials? VCRs do it cheaper. Freezing live shows while you go take a leak? Doesn't sound like much of a marketing plan. Faster random access? I doubt that anyone who's not in the storage industry has ever considered scene-retrieval from DVD movies to be "too slow".

And while playback is what most people buy VCRs for, some significant fraction does still want to keep their favorite movies, telenovelas, sitcoms, etc. A PVR with a recordable DVD drive would enable archiving. So, maybe somebody should combine an HDD and a DVD-writer in a single machine. I'd buy one (without the monthly fee, of course). But would it be profitable? Setting the retail price competitive against sub-S100 VCRs is impossible; and even holding it down to, say, $300-500 would spell the end of the OEMs' already-slim profit margin. And with make-your-own DVDs in the mix, old copyright-protection issues rise up to bite users on the--well, you get the idea.

I agree with Pait that there's a "revolution" coming to the living room, and that HDDs will be one component of it. But while that revolution will probably come when there's an HDD in every set-top box, it won't be because there's an HDD there. It will come post hoc, not necessarily propter hoc.